Computing parallel: 24-hour news is like busy-waiting, but what people really want is a signal when something actually happens. The biggest reason the news has lost its legitimacy is that 24-hour news means that a lot of news must be invented, overemphasized, or endlessly re-hashed in order to fill time. This makes it harder to convince people that what you're talking about really is news.

I've ended up getting most of my political news from the Charlie Rose show on public television. The vast majority of episodes are about non-newsy things, like culture, business, and philanthropy. Every once in awhile, something important is actually happening, and there are a couple episodes about it before moving on. It has only made the whole idea of always-on news seem even more ludicrous to me.